Unlike most of the titles that spill forth from the bins of manila packages that are wheeled into my office most days — diet books, management guides, bodice-ripper romances — I didn’t immediately file this one onto my bookshelves for consideration later. Instead, I opened it right away, sat down in my ergonomic desk chair and didn’t take a breath until I’d finished it.

It’s a woefully slim volume, just 38 pages with only a line or two on each spread. Each page of text is paired with an evocative drawing in Sendak’s signature style — part whimsical, part scary, entirely entrancing. It’s the story of brothers who find each other across infinite esoteric obstacles. (Though, to describe it as a “story” doesn’t seem quite right; this is more more like a musing, a lyric, a poem, an elegy?)